Beautiful Goodbye
by GrandiloquentHeartlessness
Summary: Tommy opens up about Angie. (Time frame explained inside.) One-shot.


**A/N:** What? Another story so soon? I know, it's shocking. I've been procrastinating a lot, don't worry about it.

Anyway, the time setting of this one-shot is hard to explain. It's in canon with my long stories Happy Birthday and Lost and Found, (technically with the un-published and unfinished epilogue to L&F, which will remain as such since I'm now working on a sequel which renders that epilogue obsolete) but it has the ability to stand on its own as long as I tell you it takes place several years after the end of the series, and that Tommy is releasing an album, which Jude is co-producing. (They're also a couple, which is probably obvious but I thought I'd clarify anyway)

The lyrics at the end are from "Beautiful Goodbye" by Maroon 5, with some of "I Won't Go Home Without You" thrown in (also Maroon 5)

* * *

Jude sighs as the last note fades and she stops the recording. She presses the button for the mic and shakes her head at Tommy through the glass. "You can do better than that, Tom."

He looks incredulous. "Still? Seriously?"

She raises her eyebrows. "Are you disagreeing?"

"Maybe I am." Tommy crosses his arms. "This is take _five,_ Harrison, I've sung it every way you asked."

Jude purses her lips, irritated at the fight she can feel brewing. "Do you want to come out here and listen to it?"

Tommy removes his headphones and comes around to her side of the glass. She presses play as he sits next to her at the board. They listen silently to the song, and when it's done he says, "It sounds fine."

"You're right." Jude nods.

Tommy frowns. "So… are we done?"

She arches an eyebrow. "Since when are you okay with just fine?"

"Don't twist my words," he groans.

"I'm not trying to. You're right. It is fine. But you can do better."

She can tell from the tension in his jaw that he's fighting not to snap at her. "Is this you trying to get revenge on me for being a hard-ass as your producer?"

"No," Jude laughs. "Even though you probably deserve it." He rolls his eyes and she continues, more seriously, "The song itself is really good, Tommy, but the way you're performing it… the emotion's not real."

His frown deepens. "What the hell does that mean?"

She leans back in her chair, crossing her arms, and bites the side of her lip for a moment before asking "What's the song about?" She watches him bristle and knows she's asked the right question.

"Why does it matter? It's a song."

She pushes harder. "Is it personal?"

"It's a song!" he protests. "It's a story, a character."

"Really?" she asks, and he breathes out in an irritated huff, shutting his eyes. She tries to keep her voice as gentle as possible when she says, "If you won't even talk about it, maybe it makes sense you can't sing about it."

His head snaps up. "Bullshit. That's _why_ we sing about things, when we can't figure out how to talk about them."

"Normally I'd agree with you, but it just… I don't know, it feels like this is something you're not facing, and I think you have to if you're going to be able to sing about it well."

Tommy shakes his head and stands up from the chair. "I am not doing this with you."

"Seriously?" she asks as he heads for the door, and it's the hurt in her voice that makes him turn around. "After all this time, after everything, and you still won't let me in?"

He sighs, and his voice is soft when he speaks again. "That's not fair. You know I let you in. You _know_ I do."

"Just not about this?"

He heaves another heavy sigh, more irritated this time. "Fine, Jude. The song's about Angie, okay? I wrote a version of it a long time ago, I found it again a couple months ago, it's about Angie. Satisfied?"

Jude nods slowly as she thinks through the lyrics. After a moment she looks back to Tommy. "You've never really told me about her."

He shrugs, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning against the door. "You know what happened."

"Yeah, I know how she died, but I mean you've never told me about _her_."

"What is there to tell?"

"Like… anything. I know nothing about her except that you were together and that she died in a car crash. But you've never talked about anything else, about what she was like."

She sees him tense, watches him fight his urge to shut down the conversation and walk out. He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. "I don't even know how to begin to answer that, Jude."

"Okay, well, how did you meet?"

He shuts his eyes and leans his head back against the door, but after a moment he answers. "On tour with Boyz Attack. Angie was a dancer, one of our back-up dancers for the tour. I had just turned 19. I was married."

"What was the first thing you noticed about her?"

He snorts a laugh and looks back at her. "What do you think? She was hot, Jude. Like, very hot. The kind of hot you notice." Jude just gives a "hmm" in response and Tommy raises an eyebrow as he goes to sit on the couch behind her. "Hey, you asked."

She turns in her chair to look at him. "That's all it took? You were married, but she was hot, so game over?" She sees his expression, hurt and offended, and quickly corrects herself. "I didn't mean it like that."

"It was over ten years ago," he protests, still looking hurt. "And Portia and I–"

"I know," she says in a soothing tone, standing up from her chair and sitting next to him on the couch, putting a hand on his knee. "Babe, I know. I seriously didn't mean it like that. What I meant was that… Well, it wasn't just a physical thing, right?"

"It started out that way." He looks away from her again, his voice quiet. "We hooked up at some party I barely remember because I was out of my mind. Back then… the lifestyle, you know, on that tour especially, because it was the biggest one, the peak of the fame… It was crazy. Toxic."

"Drinking?" she asks. When he tenses again, she says softly, "Hey, you can talk to me. Please talk to me. I want to know. And there's no judgement, you know that."

He sighs. "Yeah, drinking, of course, but a lot of drugs, too." He takes a deep breath and lets it out in another sigh, shaking his head. "It was the culture, you know? All of us on the tour, we were all young and hot and high on the fame and the money. We felt invincible, untouchable. You get really stupid really fast. I mostly tried to stay away from the harder stuff, and stuff I knew could fuck up performances, but I did my share of the club drugs. With X especially I had a tendency to…" he shakes his head again and mutters, "to wake up in bed with a stranger. Angie wasn't the first or the last."

"The first since you'd been married, though?"

He winces a little, and shakes his head. "Not even. I almost didn't even consider it cheating, that kind of a hookup. Honestly, I think Portia might've done it too. The one-night stands were a dime a dozen. Sex meant next to nothing." He looks back at her and the pain in his eyes is a familiar self-loathing. "You wouldn't have liked me, who I was then. I was a mess."

Jude's heart clenches and she puts a hand on the side of his face. "Hey," she says softly. "I love you. All of you, past and present, okay? Who you were then got you to who you are now."

He smiles a little, though he still looks sad, and reaches out for a second, brushing her face with the backs of his fingers. He quietly says, "Thanks," before pulling his hand back and looking down again.

After a moment Jude speaks again. "Okay, but it was more than that, with Angie. More than a one-night stand. You said… I mean, you loved her, right?"

He closes his eyes again for a moment, then nods. "I loved her," he confirms.

"Why? What changed that made it more than sex? I mean… what was it about her that you loved?"

Tommy shrugs, looking uncomfortable, but eventually he says, "She was a really talented dancer. Mostly self-taught, and she was phenomenal at what she did. More than that, though, you could tell she loved it. I mean, you could see it. We'd be near the end of these _brutal_ rehearsals, 8+ hours, you know? I mean, I would be just _exhausted_ , and the stuff the dancers did was a lot more physical. I don't even know how they did it. But Angie especially, she'd be clearly just dead on her feet, dripping in sweat, looking like she was about to pass out, and they'd reset and start again and as soon as the music would start she just… I don't know. She threw herself into the music so completely. She lit up. That kind of passion is rare, and it's beautiful to watch." He looks back to Jude and smiles. "You have it."

"So do you," she says earnestly.

He shrugs and looks away again. "Anyway, we started talking, having real conversations. Backstage or after shows or on the bus or whatever. We had some stuff in common." He laughs a little, darkly. "She was fucked up in some of the same ways I was, I guess. She and Hunter were in foster care as kids, spent some time in some really bad home situations when they were young before finding a good one. I, uh, never really talked much about my childhood, even with her, but I think she guessed at some of it. And honestly, I never had it as bad as she did. Nowhere near. And I think when someone trusts you enough to tell you about stuff like that, it… I don't know."

"It means a lot," Jude finishes quietly, grabbing his hand again and squeezing it.

He nods. "So then it stopped being just sex, and suddenly we were having an affair. A real, full-blown extra-marital affair." He sighs and shakes his head. "It just kind of happened. One minute it's nothing, a hook-up, and the next we're starting to talk about running away together, she's actually planning the rest of our lives together…"

"How long?"

"Not even two months, from the time I met her to…" he trails off, pain in his expression. "And Portia and I were only married a little over three months, total. It all happened really fast, but tour is this other world. You know what it's like. Traveling around, new cities every other day. It made it all so intense. But in the end…"

"You chose your career," Jude says. This is the part she knows.

"I chose the fame." She feels him tense. "And I didn't stop her when she drove away." It comes out as a whisper.

"It wasn't your fault," Jude insists. "Portia cut the brakes on the car, you couldn't have known Angie would–"

He shakes his head. "Portia did what she did because of what I did to her. She deserved better and so did Angie."

"You were only 19," she reminds him, wanting more than anything to take away the pain in his expression. "You were in a crazy situation, and you were all so young…"

He shrugs. "That's not really an excuse, though, is it? I still should've known better. The whole marriage was stupid and impulsive, but that doesn't mean I didn't know better than to cheat on my wife. And 19 is not that young. But even if we'd been 16, that doesn't mean it was a game. Angie–" his voice cracks and he clears his throat. "Angie died. Hunter lost it afterwards, ended up in jail. And Portia… People's lives got ruined. A lot of people. Because of me."

"Not because of you. The fame makes people crazy." Jude sighs. "This industry… so much fame, so young, it's crazy pressure and it just… people lose it."

Tommy turns to look at her again, one corner of his mouth turning up into a little smile. "Not you."

She shrugs. "Yeah, but I had a really good support system. I had Sadie, and my dad, and Jamie, and SME… And you. Especially you." She smiles, putting a hand on the side of his face. "You drove me crazy, but you kept me sane, you know? You taught me so much. Without you, I don't even know what I'd have done."

"It's true, I am a phenomenal teacher," he jokes, his smile growing wider.

"Cocky bastard." She rolls her eyes. He laughs, and they exchange a few kisses before pulling apart again. "Seriously, though, Tommy. You made mistakes, sure, but it was so long ago, and you've come such a long way since then. You're such a good person. You really, really are."

He shrugs again, looking uncomfortable, but when she leans into him, putting her head on his shoulder, he puts an arm around her, kissing her forehead and softly saying, "I love you."

"Thank you for telling me all of this. Seriously," she says quietly. He doesn't reply, just squeezes her shoulder. After a long moment she pulls away, sitting up. "Do you want to call it a day, or do you want to do another take?"

He takes a deep breath, then nods. "Let's go again."

"Okay." She smiles. They both stand up, and Tommy goes back into the booth as Jude resets. "Ready?" she asks, and he nods. "Okay. Beautiful Goodbye, take six."

He doesn't look at Jude as she starts the recording, angling himself and the mic so he's not looking directly at her.

 _I count the ways I let you down  
On my fingers and toes but I'm running out  
Clever words can't help me now  
I grip you tight but you're slipping out_

As Tommy sings, Jude imagines Little Tommy Q, young and already jaded. She tries to picture the girl who broke through his defenses, made him feel something real.

 _When did the rain become a storm  
When did the clouds begin to form  
Yeah we got knocked off course by a natural force  
And well, we'll be swimming when it's gone_

 _Of all the things I've felt but never really shown  
Perhaps the worst is that I ever let you go_

She imagines their last conversation, Tommy telling Angie he can't run away with her, that he doesn't love her. She imagines him hearing news of the crash, believing for years that it was his fault, that he killed the woman he loved. The pain in his expression as he sings breaks her heart, but his voice is clear and beautiful.

 _Beautiful goodbye, bye bye, bye bye  
It's dripping from your eyes  
Your beautiful goodbye whoa  
It's dripping from your eyes, oh yeah_

It takes a moment after the sound fades for Jude to be able to breathe again. She wipes tears from her cheeks and presses the button for the mic. "You nailed it, Tom. More than nailed it." Tommy's been looking at the ground, but he looks back at her and a smile spreads across his face. Jude asks, "Do you want to listen?" and he nods, taking off his headphones and coming out to sit next to her.

When the playback ends, they're both silent for a long time. Suddenly, Tommy laughs. "You're a serious pain in the ass, Harrison." She turns to him and raises her eyebrows. He reaches over and squeezes her hand. "But you're one hell of a producer."

She smiles. "I learned from the best."

* * *

 **A/N:** This comes from me thinking a lot about Angie and Boyz Attack-era Tommy as I rewatched the end of the third season (for an IS commentary thing I do on tumblr, shoot me a message if you want the link to my observations/jokes/rants/fangirling) and also thinking about the ways in which Tommy and Jude have changed in the post-series story canon I've been writing in for over seven years (and counting!) It also provides an interesting contrast to "Enough" which is a one-shot I was writing at the same time and published last week. Sort of a look-how-far-they've-come kind of a thing.

Thanks to Chloe for her help with (the agonizing process of) finding lyrics that fit. (Protip: write a story to fit lyrics, don't try to find lyrics to fit a story you've already written, it's the worst) (This is the only reason I wish I weren't a terrible songwriter: for Instant Star fanfiction) Thank you also to Silke even though I didn't use her suggestions. You are both lovely people, and I am forever grateful that you appreciate my endless Instant Star rants.

I don't really know how I feel about this story, it's not terribly exciting, but it was in my head and I wanted it out. Reviews are always appreciated.

Bonus fact: canonically, from the season 3 Instant Star Mini "Tommy and Portia", Angie Jones was a Boyz Attack backup _singer_ not a dancer, but I like it better this way. There are too many singers in this show already.


End file.
